- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Picador (2 Oct 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330511351
- ISBN-13: 978-0330511353
- Product Dimensions: 14.2 x 20.5 x 3.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 65,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Once Again to Zelda
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Product Description
Review
`The stories you don't know behind the stories you may well, this is a nosy parkers dream come true. Interesting to dip in and out of, it would make a thoughtful gift for the right person.'
--Bookbag
'A terrifically titled investigation into literary dedications.' --Observer
'perfect present'
--Image Magazine
--Bookbag
'A terrifically titled investigation into literary dedications.' --Observer
'perfect present'
--Image Magazine
Product Description
A beautiful gift-edition 'behind-the-scenes' for all book lovers
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I love the idea - an exploration of fifty famous book dedications, and the relationships behind them. And Wagman-Geller does have the knack of telling a story. It's lovely to read, easy to get through pages, and is a beautifully designed book.
But honestly! Whenever she started on about an author I actually knew something about, I questioned her version of events. For example - she says that Queen Victoria demanded her piano legs be covered and told her daughters to lie back and think of England. I would argue both of these 'statements' are pretty tenuously grounded in fact, but I guess we could let them go. But then she claims that Middlemarch is a novel with a theme of common-law marriage (really?), that Dostoevsky was reprieved from the firing squad by an imperial messenger (I understood the plan was always to make the men go through a mock execution to break their spirits), and she persists on referring to the book by Thomas Wolfe as "Look Homeward Angel" with no comma after 'homeward'.
It's tiny things like this which made me look at the references, where I was shocked to find that almost all of the research for the book had been done on the internet, a really large proportion on WIKIPEDIA. Now I love Wikipedia as much as the next person - I've written a few entries for it, even - but it's NOT suitable primary research material for a book!
She is also, I have to add, totally fixated on great love affairs, and people who loved one another until they died. She invariably finishes a chapter by remarking on how much the couple still loved one another at the point of their deaths. I can't help feeling this says more about her than about the authors themselves. :-)
So on balance, a very enjoyable read, but do I trust Wagman-Geller's stories about writers? Er....nope! But a fun read, all the same.
But honestly! Whenever she started on about an author I actually knew something about, I questioned her version of events. For example - she says that Queen Victoria demanded her piano legs be covered and told her daughters to lie back and think of England. I would argue both of these 'statements' are pretty tenuously grounded in fact, but I guess we could let them go. But then she claims that Middlemarch is a novel with a theme of common-law marriage (really?), that Dostoevsky was reprieved from the firing squad by an imperial messenger (I understood the plan was always to make the men go through a mock execution to break their spirits), and she persists on referring to the book by Thomas Wolfe as "Look Homeward Angel" with no comma after 'homeward'.
It's tiny things like this which made me look at the references, where I was shocked to find that almost all of the research for the book had been done on the internet, a really large proportion on WIKIPEDIA. Now I love Wikipedia as much as the next person - I've written a few entries for it, even - but it's NOT suitable primary research material for a book!
She is also, I have to add, totally fixated on great love affairs, and people who loved one another until they died. She invariably finishes a chapter by remarking on how much the couple still loved one another at the point of their deaths. I can't help feeling this says more about her than about the authors themselves. :-)
So on balance, a very enjoyable read, but do I trust Wagman-Geller's stories about writers? Er....nope! But a fun read, all the same.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It's an interesting idea for a book (maybe) but the result is terrible, largely due to bad writing. The dreck detector starts beeping even as you read the introduction, with its clunking declaration "I discovered that what precedes the opening line of a novel can serve as a crystal ball as to what is to follow the turning of the pages."
The author describes herself as a "Dedication Detective", but the sheer straightforwardness of most of the dedications is a problem for would-be sleuthing. People dedicate their books to partners and friends, and the results are hardly even literary gossip. Instead we get potted biographical sketches and groan-inducing writing. Stephen King "met his emotional life jacket in 1967" (i.e. his wife Tabitha) and Salman Rushdie and Marianne Wiggins discovered "commonalities" (or things in common, as we say in English) like being the same age. Jacqueline Susann dedicated Valley of the Dolls to her poodle and her husband Irving, but it was a troubled marriage: she became "extremely promiscuous with people other than Irving." It would be hard to be extremely promiscuous with people who were Irving.
There is some further groan-inducing wordplay on titles. When it comes to Ernest Hemingway and his wife, the bell tolls for them (get it?). Carson McCullers didn't have a happy life, but "Maybe in the next world... her heart no longer had to be `a lonely hunter.'"
A piece on George Eliot tells us that sexual repression in Victorian England "of course, emanated from the queen herself, who had all the piano legs in her palace covered with cloth because they were too suggestive of female anatomy." In fact ("of course") the idea the Victorians covered their piano legs out of sexual modesty is an idiotic myth.
The most noteworthy thing about this sad example of novelty publishing is the bibliography. It runs to about thirty pages but it is a book-free zone, composed almost entirely of references to websites and the occasional magazine article. The total bibliography for Lewis Carroll is three Wikipedia entries. This is not otherwise a significant book in any way, but it probably deserves notice as a minor landmark in the history of so-called "dumbing down".
The author describes herself as a "Dedication Detective", but the sheer straightforwardness of most of the dedications is a problem for would-be sleuthing. People dedicate their books to partners and friends, and the results are hardly even literary gossip. Instead we get potted biographical sketches and groan-inducing writing. Stephen King "met his emotional life jacket in 1967" (i.e. his wife Tabitha) and Salman Rushdie and Marianne Wiggins discovered "commonalities" (or things in common, as we say in English) like being the same age. Jacqueline Susann dedicated Valley of the Dolls to her poodle and her husband Irving, but it was a troubled marriage: she became "extremely promiscuous with people other than Irving." It would be hard to be extremely promiscuous with people who were Irving.
There is some further groan-inducing wordplay on titles. When it comes to Ernest Hemingway and his wife, the bell tolls for them (get it?). Carson McCullers didn't have a happy life, but "Maybe in the next world... her heart no longer had to be `a lonely hunter.'"
A piece on George Eliot tells us that sexual repression in Victorian England "of course, emanated from the queen herself, who had all the piano legs in her palace covered with cloth because they were too suggestive of female anatomy." In fact ("of course") the idea the Victorians covered their piano legs out of sexual modesty is an idiotic myth.
The most noteworthy thing about this sad example of novelty publishing is the bibliography. It runs to about thirty pages but it is a book-free zone, composed almost entirely of references to websites and the occasional magazine article. The total bibliography for Lewis Carroll is three Wikipedia entries. This is not otherwise a significant book in any way, but it probably deserves notice as a minor landmark in the history of so-called "dumbing down".
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